


Of Robotic Teddy Bears and Floating Jellyfish

by dolophoni_xia



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-16
Updated: 2013-04-16
Packaged: 2017-12-08 15:30:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/762995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dolophoni_xia/pseuds/dolophoni_xia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a short story that is in progress about a child prodigy that balances life as a superhero with her pet jellyfish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Robotic Teddy Bears and Floating Jellyfish

**Author's Note:**

> This work is still being worked on...more will be added by some point this week. I own none of the toys mentioned in this work! Or none of their copyrights rather, I do have Matryoshka dolls in the form of penguins in my room.
> 
> Edit 4-16-13  
> I updated this story with the ending and parts that I changed during the rereading process! I may add more to this story at some point...I feel there are places where I can elaborate but we shall see!
> 
> Edit-5-13-13  
> Fixed a lot of issues with this story through various edits that I did for class. IT should all be the same tense now! haha, also explained how some of the things came to be a little better! I hope if anyone reads it you like it! ^^

“Spot....Spot...SPOT, where are you hiding you silly thing?” I sigh as I move the boxes that hold various parts for my experiments and projects,while looking for my wayward pet. I had just gotten home from school and this was routine, hunting for Spot. Wondering where he was hiding to keep away from my mom and to sleep, I yelp as I move a box too far and it starts a domino falling effect of boxes onto my head. Hearing a noise Spot comes out to see what is going on.  
“What are you doing under all those boxes Master?”

  
“Trying to find you Spot,” I mutter as I shove the fallen boxes to the side and stand up. I halfheartedly glare at Spot “Where did you hide today?”

  
“In the lampshade, the lamp was off and it was dark and lovely in there. Your mother didn't even notice me when she vacuumed it.”

  
“One of these days she's going to find you ,Spot if you keep hiding right under her nose and she'll throw you out.”

  
I suppose I should explain why my mom wanted to throw out my pet Spot, which is short for Slimy Plethora of Tentacles. Frankly Spot freaked my mom out, but she didn't know he was a real jellyfish, or that he could talk, or that his tank had a jet propulsion system in it so he could accompany me on my missions, but I will explain my missions a little bit later. It was last year that I got Spot, one of those _Turritopsis nutricula_ or immortal jellyfish. When my mom first saw him she thought he was kinda cool, but then she swore she saw him move a few times and told me I needed to get rid of him cause it just freaked her out. I told her of course it looked like he was moving, it was a silicon model suspended in a gelatinous substance but it still bothered her so Spot had to hide or be tossed. It brought Spot never ending amusement to see where he could hide and almost be found by her. He delighted in seeing her wonder where he had been “hidden” this time. It was a good thing mom wasn't able to hear Spot giggle when she came close to finding him, because Spot could only talk to me, and mentally at that. What she doesn't know won't hurt her—Spot is harmless after all, just very playful.

  
Perhaps I should clear up what I meant by missions, but to do that I need to tell you a bit more about myself. My name is Astra and I am ten years old, oh and I've got an IQ of 150 points. I could technically move up several grades, or even go to college, but that wouldn't be fun, and it would take up time that I use to make my gadgets. So I just chug along with my classmates, and use the spare time to modify kids toys into useful gadgets to use against criminals. Since I want to stay in the 3rd grade, I tend to keep my speech patterns along the lines of my classmates. Plus it makes criminals underestimate me. Besides, sometimes my classmates give me the best ideas, like the other day Ella was playing with those Matryoshka dolls and I got the best idea ever! Make them able to shrink and grow as well as move—some sort of hovering device to be installed on the bottom of them—and they can chase the criminals and trap them inside the smallest one and the others can just “eat” the doll that contains the criminal. I'm still working out all the bugs before I make a full set, so for now I have just one doll that is my tester. At the moment it keeps shrinking instead of staying big when its supposed to be big. I've been carrying it around trying to figure it out, which doesn't matter cause everyone thinks that I just have a doll with me.

  
Other than the Matryoshka dolls, I have silly putty that is super sticky so when it is tossed on the ground and the criminal steps on it they get stuck. There are also robotic teddy bears. Designed to hug the enemy and hold him until the cops arrive on the scene. The teddy bears are all in different colors making a rainbow. A jump rope that stretches to hold the enemy no matter how large or small he might be, since it is so stretchy it makes it very hard to escape from. There are bubbles, yes bubbles, like the ones us kids play with all the time during the summer, but these are very strong and once someone is trapped inside them he can't escape. Only a special compound that I provide can dissolve the bubble. On the off chance that the cops are too busy to get to the scene of the crime, I have a prison of my own to stick the criminals into. It's designed after a snow globe complete with a little house inside and holiday music. When a button at the base is pushed then snow falls inside the globe. It's located outside the actual prison, so when the cops can't come and pick up the criminal I just drop them off there.

  
My costume for crime fighting is simple. I have a series of hoodies that are reversible. On one side they are completely solid colored, on the other side they are patterned with rainbows, so it is simple to change looks to go catch criminals. The hoodies are designed to keep me warm in the winter and cool in the summer. That technology took a little bit to build into cloth, but it was worth it so I wasn't over heating during the summer months or freezing in winter. When the rainbow side is on the outside, and I pull the hood up and tug on the strings, a digital mask covers my face concealing my identity and changing my voice. The last thing I want to do is have my mom find out what I do when I go for walks. I'm glad tomorrow is the last day of the school week. I need some more lab time. Its hard sneaking in lab time when your mom is always checking up on you to make sure you are in bed.

  
Today is Friday, and I am excited for the weekend. The weekend means more time to experiment and to wander around town. My mom doesn't mind me walking around town since I typically have my neighbor's dog with me. She is a complete sweetheart and her appearance of a big German Sheppard is enough to deter most people from asking me questions and wondering what I am doing on my own. Add in the fact that she is police trained, albeit retired, and I am pretty safe. Never mind the fact that I carry around my bubbles and other gadgets, so I'm not too worried. But before the weekend happens I have to go to school.  
School starts out how it always does, though one of the classes on my floor has a substitute teacher today. Poor Mr. Trip is out sick, that's sad Mr. Trip teaches our art class and always lets us make crazy things with the clay. The substitutes never let us play with the clay and I was looking forward to making a model of Spot. Other than art class, I mostly like our free time, which is when I start to plan out my next experiment or mentally double check the equations of my current one. After lunch we have recess and thats when I begin noticing it. A few of my classmates are acting strange. Typically they are the most boisterous of the lot, running around yelling and screaming, as is normal of my age group. Today, though there is a group of them just sitting at the edge of the playground, looking like all they want to do is sleep. When I go over to see what was up, they are talking about how they were so tired, and how their bodies are sore, like from a growth spurt. Which is strange, that all of them would have had growth spurts at the same time. After recess it is Science class where we were measuring plant growth with aphids. That was cool. We had to count the aphids and see how many of them are on our plant. Each plant is being fed different things to see if that affected how many aphids would thrive on the plant.

  
Since today is Friday, they let us watch a movie during the last part of school. We were watching Treasure Planet, which is a really cool movie and I wonder if I can make a morph? The same kids that were tired during recess are still tired, some of them even fell asleep, but there are others,too, who are starting to look tired as well. Its strange. I leave the room that we are watching Treasure Planet in after asking the teacher if I can go to the bathroom. As I return I passed by the nurses office and the door isn't completely closed. I can hear the two nurses talking back and forth.

  
“Is it an epidemic?” The first voice asks.

  
“I'm not sure, whatever it is, its spreading all over the district.” voice two says sounding a little worried.

  
The voices move away from the door so I leave while pondering the meaning of what I have just heard. Walking back into the classroom where the movie is playing, I pull out my tablet that I had won a few months ago for a robot making contest. It was a fairly simple contest it was to test our knowledge of basic circuitry that we had learned in our science class. I decide to check on what I heard, so typing in “epidemic” and the zipcode I wait for the results to load. A whole bunch of stories come up.

  
_“Something in the Air?”_  
 _“3rd Comatose Child from Layton District—Mysterious illness”_  
 _“What's happening to our school children?”_

  
I click on the second article and read through. It's about a boy from one of the other elementary schools in my district, who after lunch yesterday passed out and won't wake up. The teachers said he was fine at the beginning of the day but he became tired over the course of the morning, until finally after lunch he fell asleep.

  
Closing out the article I begin trying to think of what could be causing this. Luckily one of my friends who has been uncharacteristically sleepy today wanders over. I decide to ask her some questions to try and get to the bottom of this.

  
“Hi Natalia, how are you?”

  
“Alright Astra.” She yawns, “Just really sleepy”

  
“Really? This morning you looked like you had just eaten an entire bag of rock candy.”

  
“I know right? But in Mr. Trip's class I started getting really tired. The sub said it was because we used a lot of muscles with the modeling wire today. But it was fun in class! He showed me how to bend the wires into different shapes, I had problems with the lions tail it didn't want to stay upright, but he helped me...” Natalia trails off yawning all the while.

  
Leaving Natalia alone since she is falling asleep. I walk over to Mr. A and ask if it is ok for me to go to the art room to get paper to draw on. After he says yes, I walk toward Mr. Trip's room. His substitute hasn't come with the others to sit with us and watch the movie, granted they were all taking shifts in watching us. I guess there is only so much of a children's movie that adults can watch. Mr. Trip has one of those really cool rooms, which is really two rooms that have been combined into one, it has a divider wall in the middle so the teacher can make the room smaller or larger as they need it. So there are multiple doors and lots of things everywhere since it's a art studio. He's a rather unorganized artist, but that makes him all the more fun.

  
I enter the room as quietly as I can and hear a man mumbling something about energy and a good way to get it. Peering through a shelf I see Mr. Trips substitute grinning tiredly as he is holding a jar of what looks to be light, which is in itself not normal because you can't put light in a jar. He turns around a little and had this crazy glint in his eyes. I swear I don't make a noise as I ducked behind the shelf but next thing I know he is coming around the corner.  
“What are you doing in here, child? Aren't you watching a movie with the rest of your classmates?”

  
“Yes, sir I just came to get some construction paper.” I hold up the paper that had been on the shelf in front of me. “Some of my friends and I wanted to make those fortune tellers.”

  
Feeling like he is analyzing me I do my best impression of a scolded child who just wanted to have some fun. I hear him sigh and tell me to get back to the classroom the movie was showing in. As I leave the room and turn around to shut the door I see him looking at that jar critically before hiding it away. My mind whirring over the possibilities of what it could be, I dash back to Mr. A's classroom where Treasure Planet is being shown clutching the construction paper. Mr. A says that I am a visual learner and that making all these craft projects and drawings help to increase my brain capacity. If only he knew. I begin what would look like to others drawing random pictures all over the paper, but it is a code that only Spot and I know.

 

Things That I know:  
~multiple students are exhausted---usually the most energetic ones  
~all those students had art today  
~they were only exhausted after having art class—I asked some of them what class they had last.  
~Mr. Trip's substitute is the only non-regular teacher  
~crazy glint in his eyes  
~jar of glowing...energy?  
Hypothesis—Mr. Trip's substitute is stealing the kids energy. But how?

 

“Nice drawings Astra.” I jump startled to find Mr. A next to me. He laughs and tells me that I must have been really focused on them to not hear him. Mr. A isn't known for being very quiet when he walks.

  
“Thank you, Mr. A. They're just doodles and animals and random things.” After admiring the pictures for a few minutes Mr. A wanders over to the group of kids that started playing rubber band wars, intent on stopping them before they do too much damage to themselves or the glass vase on the table behind them. Tapping my watch which has a button connected to Spot's tank, I blink and groan, wondering why I didn't think of that earlier when I was searching for him. I guess even a genius can have her blank moments too. I wait for the bell announcing that school is over and that as a walker I can leave. As soon as it goes off, I head to the area that Spot and I designated as our meet-up place when I call him from school, hearing a faint whirring noise as I walk closer to where Spot is.  
“Hello Master, are we going on an adventure today?”

  
“Yes we are Spot, and remind me when we get home to take a look at your tank. Its making a whirring noise. Do you have the bubbles?”

  
“Yes Master.” Out of a compartment on Spots tank comes the bubbles that I mentioned previously. I had been carrying those with me to school, but with a very close incident with a classmate almost using them, and capturing one of our teachers in one I stopped. Changing my hoodie inside out, I grin as I tug the strings and feel the mask snap in place. Time to go find out what is going on with that jar.

  
I sneak back into the school, which really isn't as difficult as it should be. Maybe I should upgrade the schools security? Anyway, focus. I head back to Mr. Trips room to find both doors open and, no teacher. Slipping through the hallways as quietly as possibly I head to the teachers lounge. Spot is in the ventilation system and keeping an eye through the vents for anything suspicious.

  
“Master, I am above the teachers lounge—all the teachers are ones that I know.” Spot announces quite clearly ending my need to go there at all.

  
Since he isn't there, where is he? I slip outside to the teachers parking lot and see the teacher. He is doing something in his trunk. I see him take out a jar from his trunk that is glowing, but not as brightly as the one he had in the art classroom, and in its place he puts the new jar, the one from the art classroom. I can tell the difference because the jars have different colored bands on the top. The one in the art classroom has a purple band, the one from the trunk had a silver band around the top of it. The lids on the jars are—strange. They look like you can put your hand in them, and just as I think that, that's what he goes and does. The light in the jar begins to fade and all the tiredness that was beginning to show on his face fades away too, replaced with an almost manic amount of energy.  
His eyes are practically glowing with the energy he has seemingly absorbed from the jar. This is emphasized by the glow disappearing completely from the silver banded jar. As I look at him I also notice that the silver band in his twisted metallic bracelet glows. I think through the various clues I found rapidly—That seems to be the connection between the jar and him! Its also probably how the energy gets in the jar. He helps the student with their work and comes in close contact with their hands slowly draining their energy that is then stored in the jar until he needs it later.

  
I don't even hesitate anymore and taking out the bubbles blow one in his direction to catch him. He evades it though! And since the bubbles only work when they capture someone, it just pops after thirty seconds.

  
“Come out, little superhero. You can't hide from me, I can feel your energy.”

  
I come out from where I was standing, as my brain works out how to stop him.

  
“Those bubbles are cute, but they can't catch me.”

  
I wonder where Spot might be and knowing he probably got stuck in the school, or distracted with pixie sticks. He has an unhealthy obsession with pixie sticks. I send a few more bubbles his way and as he is focusing on them I take out my Matryoshka tester doll and let it loose. It grows like it is supposed to, zooms in on its target and chomps. As Mr. Substitute is paying attention to the bubbles and evading them he doesn't see the Matryoshka doll and then gets eaten by it. Now I hope it doesn't shrink while he is inside or things could get messy.

  
Going to his car I find just the one jar of energy. Theoretically if one takes away the container the energy is in, it will just go back where it's supposed to. So hurling the jar on the ground works well, since it is sealed and I can't open it. It smashes into lots of tiny pieces. Taking the band from the pieces of the jar, I intend to take it home to use metal cutters on it so I can make sure that this band won't be used again. The energy-light stays as a blob for a moment before shooting into the air and splitting into several directions. The Matryoshka doll has been spinning around in circles and jumpin up and down sporadically, ensuring that the criminal inside is unconscious or at the very least very dizzy and nauseated. I open the doll just enough to be able to reach in and grab his hand with the bracelet and yank the bracelet off. I will need to make sure that this is also destroyed so that it also can't be used again.

  
Last thing to do is dial the number for 911 and tell them that there is a criminal waiting for them at the school trapped in a doll. I give them the instructions on how to get him out of the doll, and they know where to leave it once he is out. Right next to the snowglobe prison. I hang up and begin heading to the meeting place to wait for Spot. As I wait for Spot to join me at the meeting place, I change my hoodie back to normal. When Spot does join me he is covered in what looks to be sparkles.

  
“You thought the glitter was a pixie stick in a jar didn't you?”

  
“...Yes Master. It didn't taste yummy though, and it sticks to me.”

  
Sighing Spot and I head home. It's just a typical day in the life of a ten year old genius and her floating pet jellyfish.


End file.
